Rap is a Man's Soul
by GenetiX23
Summary: In most cases, a Deal with Death is only slightly less recommended than a Deal with a Demon. However, they both seem to have worked out for the one and only Naruto Namikaze, future-past Rokudaime Hokage. Featuring a strong Naruto, multi-elemental chakra manipulation, kamikaze clones, general mayhem, rap, and time travel. Not featuring angst or yaoi.


**A/N: **This story is not to be taken seriously; hell, even I think it's more than mildly mediocre. Still, I wrote it, will accept criticism of it, and hope that it brings a smile to someone's face...that is, if I ever write more of it. I'm well aware that my dialogue is far less than good. I'll be trying to limit my Japanese usage, so don't expect honorifics. Also don't expect nosebleeds as a sign of arousal; seriously, what's up with that?

* * *

><p><strong> Disclaimer: I own nothing that the creator of Naruto should be concerned about. (Unless I somehow acquire the rights to a multi-billion dollar intellectual property before the story is finished, this disclaimer holds for the remainder of the story.)<strong>

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 0: Prologue: A Deal with Death.<strong>

There were 5. Now 50. Now 500. 5000. 50000. A sea of clones, garbed in free-flowing robes of orange, a stylized fox head on their backs. And yet, their maker was absent. The Orange Wave, they called him, perhaps unconsciously echoing his father's moniker. He'd toyed with attempting the Hiraishin – the flying thunder god, source of the Yellow Flash's title– long ago, but felt that it was far simpler to be in two places rather than moving from one to another. What the Fourth Hokage was to movement, the Sixth Hokage was to presence.

The clone army fired. Great barrages of earth bullets (Earth Style: Earth Shot) cracked the fortress walls, wind storms (Wind Style: Scarring Gale) tore strips into the rock, and fire rained from the sky (Fire Style: Flame Deluge) to burn the defenders. Then the second strike. Waves of water (Water Style: Tidal Crash) formed from nothing and crashed into the weakened foundations; lightning crackled along the new sea, (Lightning Style: Shock Arc) destroying the remnants of the once mighty defenses. And now, the vanguard went to work.

Ice clones, masters of wind and water, flew through the sky on wings of frost. Lava clones, lords of earth and fire, surged down below, melding through the ground. Heat and Boil; Wood and Thunder; Sand and Storm; Plasma and Magnet. All these raced through the broken fortress in a desperate race towards their creator, hoping against hope that his tormentor had left him alive.

They were too late. As a man in an orange spiral mask looked on, the last vestiges of life began to fade from the son of Minato Namikaze and Kushina Uzumaki. With his penultimate breath, the dying man commanded his clones to form the completed Rasengan, the spiraling sphere, in hopes of taking out his tormentor. Great balls of chakra, imbued with the five ninja elements in all combinations, grew over the site. With his final command, he bid them fire.

All went white. In almost any other situation, everything would have been vaporized, and that would be the end of things. It was fortunate, perhaps, that the man in the spiral mask currently contained eight of the the nine tailed beasts. Chakra was not a nice force, nor was it especially predictable. For something underpinning the lives of all shinobi, it was remarkably temperamental. Which is why hitting the container of the largest repository of pure chakra on the planet with more than a dozen spheres of pure chakra force, created by clones formed from the last remnants of the ninth tailed beast, might have caused the sheer chaos that followed.

The man in the spiral mask –Obito Uchiha, Tobi, Madara– was atomized instantly. Shockwaves from the explosion caused quite a few indirect fatalities. Naruto, as stated, was already dead. As the Shinigami, the reaper, approached, It began to speak. "Well, that was inventive, at least." It smirked. "I haven't had this much fun in _ages_. The last time I enjoyed something like this was 6 years ago, when Blondie over there bisected and cooked that Zetsu guy", It began musing "I never did get exactly what the Rabbit Lady saw in the plant thing anyway."

Naruto's Soul– a strange blue-ish white approximation of his state in life– not having had time to get away from his body in the space between his death and the chakra detonation, brought his metaphysical hand to his supernatural head, scratched the post-tangible back of his hyperphysical head, and asked a very expected question, if one not quite appropriate to the gravitas of the situation. "Wait, what?" It was a rather valid though, all things considered. One would expect the reaper of souls to be definitely lacking in the humor department. (The morbidity of the humor, in contrast, was all too appropriate.)

Obito Uchiha's soul, meanwhile, was being dragged downwards a bit too fast for him to make out what exactly was going on. The deity of the realm, Kami, was an ardent consequentialist, and thus the brainwashing of Madara proper did not serve to ameliorate the fate of the once-pleasant genin-cum-mass murderer. Regardless, this version of the prodigal Uchiha (traitors to the last, with the surprising exception of the ever-patriotic Itachi,) was being duly punished for his sins. Down he goes; where he stops, no one knows.

Meanwhile, the reaper, having ended Its pondering, addressed the ex-Rokudaime. "Well now, you weren't supposed to die here." Naruto's soul, freed from emotions such as panic, was able to ask why that might be. "Oh, it's unimportant, really. You don't get a second chance or anything." It chuckled. "Although, if...no, that...hmm..." It paused. "Tell me, what are your thoughts on the male demon container from the Village Hidden in the Clouds?" Naruto's spiritual essence shrugged. "B? He's cool, if a bit insane."

The Shinigami, embodiment and courier of death, smiled. "Well, I have a proposition for you." Naruto's non-corporeal self waved his hand, in a ghostly approximation of a 'get on with it' action. Its grin grew impossibly wide. "How would you like a do-over?" Naruto's inner self was quick to nod. "It comes with a few conditions, you understand. The first is–" The Hokage's sense of self cut It off. "I don't care. It's not like things could get any worse."

It laughed. "Good. Still, you should know what you're getting yourself into. First, you're going back as yourself, not a younger version of you", It paused "No one may be told – or merely directed towards the knowledge – that you are one and the same, with one exception." Naurto's collection of intrinsic traits asked the obvious question: "What is the exception, Lord Shinigami?" It shook Its head. "Not what, who. The exception is Killer Bee."

The orange-or rather, blue-ish white-clad ninja was taken aback. "What? Why him?" It laughed. "Because I find his rap amusing", It continued, "The second condition is that you retain possession of the Kyuubi." Naruto's heavenly presence objected: "Won't my younger self have Kurama inside him?" It merely smiled. "No, your younger self has, had, and will have half of the Kyuubi inside of him. I'm giving you the other half that your dear old dad gave me so long ago."

The Rokudaime's trans-natural core grunted in acknowledgement. "Anything else?" He smiled, "Maybe a romantic requirement? Perhaps a soul-mate of some sort?" "Nope! Have fun!", responded the Shinigami, and sent Naruto's manifested psyche screaming on a journey beyond human ken.


End file.
